This hasn't been a good few weeks for Tony
Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP.
In the weeks since the huge oil spill in the Gulf began, he has struck
an occasionally Churchillian tone: "We are going to defend the beaches,"
he proclaimed.
"We will fix this." But the British leader he most calls to mind is Ethelred
the Unready.

For CEOs in crisis, the playbook includes a proper appreciation of
the gravity of the situation, a sense of calm urgency, and
confidence-building rhetoric backed by confidence-building action. So
far, Hayward is zero for three. From the outset, there's been a sense
that Hayward wasn't quite prepared for this and didn't quite grasp what
is at stake. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hayward "admitted
that the oil giant had not the technology available to stop the leak. He
also said in hindsight, it was 'probably true' that BP should have done
more to prepare for such an emergency."

As the spill worsened, Hayward fretted
that he and BP were its victims. "What they hell have we done to deserve
this?" he reportedly
told fellow executives. Of course, Hayward isn't the victim here. The
sea life, the sea itself, the employees who died, the fishermen who are
losing their livelihoods, the tourism industry, responsible
drillers—they're the victims. Hayward should have been asking himself:
What they hell did they do to deserve this? And what am I going to do
fix it?

The private grumbling has been matched by public bumbling. Hayward
has used unfortunate metaphors. "We will only win this if we can win the
hearts and minds of the local community," he said, apparently unaware
that "hearts and minds" is a phrase forever identified with the debacle
of the Vietnam War. And in a moment of exquisitely bad taste, Hayward
said: "Apollo 13 did not stop the space program. The Air France airplane
that fell out of the sky off of Brazil did not stop the aviation
industry." Among the many crucial differences between Apollo 13 and this
oil spill: Apollo 13 turned out to be a feel-good triumph of
engineering, since the astronauts came home alive. The BP spill is
simply an epic fail.

At other times, Hayward sounds like a
Monty Python character, with understatement that would be comic if it
weren't so tragic. Here's how he recently explained BP's response: "It
was a bit bumpy to get it going. We made a few little mistakes early
on." As this Financial Timesarticle
noted, Hayward was proud of the containment effort. "Almost nothing has
escaped," Hayward said. And here's the best yet, from the Guardian:
"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil
and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total
water volume." Yes, it's just a flesh wound!

Unfortunately for BP, the irregular flow
of data is undermining Hayward's case. The New York Timesreported
on Saturday: "Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3
miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh
evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be
substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have
given." But, the Times noted, "BP has resisted entreaties from
scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the
ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil
is really gushing from the well." Meanwhile, in an interview
with the BBC, Hayward was saying: "it's not possible to measure the
flow from the leak."

Hayward's sangfroid is impressive. Asked
if he felt insecure in his position, he responded. "I don't at the
moment. That of course may change." I wouldn't expect him to be storming
up and down the barrier islands like Canute, trying to
keep the tides away. But by any measure, this has been a monstrous
cock-up. Because of its poor planning, BP is wasting resources belonging
to its shareholders and to the earth, it's destroying people's
livelihoods, and it's poisoning the atmosphere for the industry. Sure,
you would expect any CEO worth his golden parachute to try to downplay
the damage of such an incident. But listening to Hayward, you don't have
much of a sense that he grips how much damage this incident and the
poor response to it have inflicted on all of BP's stakeholders.

For some companies, a crisis can turn out
to be an opportunity. If BP had managed to shut down the leak
immediately, it would have gone a long way toward limiting its
reputational and financial damage. But as it drags on, the spill
reinforces the popular notion that BP has a poor safety
record in North America. And all the while, its CEO comes off as
glib, wistful, self-involved, and foolish.